A. I.

There is a growing race around the world to develop advanced Artificial Intelligence. The United States has an early advantage but China is pouring resources into their efforts and other countries are working on their version. The Arab states with their vast oil derived financial resources are involved. A.I. is beginning to return value for the billions that have been invested. There are promising advances in medical and scientific field.

It isn’t public knowledge but there is no doubt a huge portion of the investments are going into the development of military applications.

It is clear that we are on the cusp of massive changes. It is a futile exercise to try and put the genie back in the bottle. Once something of such promise and power is unleashed we can’t take it back

There is, however, one massive roadblock which delays its development. AI requires a massive amount of energy. It is estimated that, by 2030, it will consume as much as 16% of total US energy consumption.

That startling statistic sent me down the rabbit hole of how we can possibly meet such demand. My first thought was, “How close are we to producing energy through nuclear fusion?” There was talk earlier this year about a start-up facility to produce fusion power already in progress. Now, however, I see no mention of that being underway. Instead, I see the same old prognostication that we’re twenty years away. We’ve been, supposedly, twenty years away for at least fifty years. There is always the possibility that such a facility is being developed without public scrutiny. That would, of course, require government assistance.

Without such technology coming on line it seems to me we’re going to have to speed up every possible wind and solar installation. The use of carbon based fuels such as coal and even natural gas seems ultimately unacceptable. That leaves us with the difficult decision to increase traditional nuclear power plants.

We’ve come a very long way in developing efficient, reliable, and safe nuclear plants. In spite of the disasters of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, they can be built safely. There are ongoing efforts to develop smaller reactors to lessen the footprint of major facilities.

On one level it would be nice to stop the whole process and return to saner, slower times but that isn’t going to happen. As is always the case, the only solution to rapidly advancing change is to plan to accommodate it in ways that are socially and economically acceptable.

There are always folks who want to legislate anchors to prevent rapid change. Unfortunately, we aren’t alone in this. It would be disastrous if the Chinese or others were able to win this race. The Chinese are, for example, developing ways in which they can use the technology to increase the power of their authoritarian regime.

In spite of some radical impulses in our society the last thing any of us should want is increased authoritarian influence in our world.